Logan Voralius's page

I'm working on a bard character concept for a Jade Regent campaign. The character's backstory is that she was a lion-tamer in a travelling Varisian circus. I'm probably taking the Animal Speaker bard archetype.

1) Is there a way RAW to get an animal companion, though any kind of feats or archetypes? I'm not interested in multiclassing.

2) If not (which I suspect is the case), what do you think would be a balanced trade-off? Would a feat be enough? A swap of a class features? Maybe a custom feat to take the cleric animal domain minus the spells?

3) Alternately, how viable is simply using Handle Animal to train a regular animal?

My GM is open to creative ideas so long as they're not unbalancing.

My combat strategy is going to be to use nets, whips and spells (grease, minor image) for battlefield control and let other characters do the damage.

I'm planning on running a short "campaign" of maybe 6-10 sessions: longer than a single adventure, but shorter than an adventure path. Any suggestions of published modules that would be a good fit?

I realize that a skill-monkey wilderness cleric is a bit of contradiction for optimization purposes, but here's my idea:

I'm starting a new game at level 1 with a party that so far consists of an infernal sorcerer, a shapeshifting ranger, and a zen archer monk. Most of the other players are new to RPG's, though I've been playing for a while.

I've never played a cleric, so I want to try one out and also want to provide healing, restoration, etc for the party. The character concept I have in mind, RP-wise, is a knowledge skill-monkey wilderness survivalist, so I'm considering the 3.5 Unearthed Arcana cloistered cleric variant.

My character is a worshipper of Gozreh, so I'm taking the animal domain (with the boon companion feat so I'll have a reasonably good animal companion) and another domain, plus the bonus knowledge domain from the cloistered cleric variant.

I'm struggling with the ability scores, though. I want at least Cha 13 for selective channeling, a decent Wis for spellcasting, a decent Int for the RP character concept, and a decent Con so I can survive a hit or two. That leaves Str and Dex as dump stats, which I fear will make me utterly ineffective at doing anything at low-level (especially with the poor BAB) before I can cast a few spells per day. I'm considering focussing spellcasting on summoning.

Any thoughts or suggestions on ability scores, feats, or character concepts that might work with this? Or even just ideas of things for cleric to do at low levels (before I get my animal companion) that don't involve directly hitting enemies?

This thread is in the archives, so I wasn't sure whether to reply to it.

Has anyone come across any official answers on the Accelerated Drinker / Alchemist Extract question?

For calculating CMB, the rules say:

Add any bonuses you currently have on attack rolls due to spells, feats, and other effects. These bonuses must be applicable to the weapon or attack used to perform the maneuver.

For a character fighting unarmed, would Weapon Focus (unarmed strike) add +1 to CMB for all combat maneuvers?

I'm wondering about grappling specifically, as the rules for Weapon Focus say:

Choose one type of weapon. You can also choose unarmed strike or grapple (or ray, if you are a spellcaster) as your weapon for the purposes of this feat.

...which makes it seem like "grapple" can be considered a type of weapon distinct from unarmed strikes. It seems clearer that Weapon Focus would apply to CMB for, say, disarm or sunder maneuvers (as they deal weapon damage), but I'm not as sure about grapple or, for that matter, bull rush and trip.